Live Long and Prosper (Purr)
by SinnamonGirl
Summary: Spock rescues a soft and furry antique belonging to Kirk's family and it gets McCoy thinking about what Spock might really like to get his hands on. Eventual K/S.


Note: In order for this story to work, I've made the events of Gary Seven occur _before_ those of Amok Time. Apologies!

Live Long and Prosper (purr)

It was an incredibly rare thing for Dr. Leonard McCoy to cross the threshold of Spock's chamber. He didn't know how the green-blooded bastard did it, but despite being issued standard command quarters, Spock seemed to occupy a completely foreign territory. Maybe it was the way he'd changed the atmospheric settings to mimic the red light of Vulcan's fierce sun. Or maybe the scents threw McCoy: the spice-sharp smell of incense, that vanilla-passed-through-blue-flame smell that was simply _Spock_. Whatever the reason, the back of his neck always began to prickle right outside the Science Officer's door where he now stood, hesitating. The insular Vulcan wouldn't welcome the intrusion, but all of his requests for Spock to come to sickbay had been ignored. Following the events on Vulcan, Spock had shown a gift for defying his medical expertise; that defiance made McCoy think that he was hiding something, made him fear that the aborted blood fever might return, or that its sudden dissipation might have long-lasting effects that Spock had not revealed. The emotion effects of being more-or-less left at the altar were a concern, too, but he knew Spock would not confide in him.

Cursing his pointy-eared friend for his stubbornness, he raised his hand to the door and rapped against it. "Spock?" Relief surged through him when the Vulcan deigned to answer. He _looked_ healthy enough; there were no green spots high in his cheekbones; his eyes were clear and dark, his breathing measured.

"Doctor, I can assure you that these latest scans are quite unnecessary."

Bullying his way inside, Bones gave him a sharp look. "And when Star Fleet certifies you as a medical officer with the knowledge and ability to treat a half-human Vulcan, I'll take your word for it." He waved Spock toward a chair and then stopped, startled. Fierce, golden eyes ringed with black were regarding him over a tawny muzzle opened to expose very sharp, very curved, and very pale teeth. Attempting to downplay his reaction, he borrowed a Vulcan mannerism and lifted one eyebrow in question. "Some new form of decorating, Spock?"

McCoy sensed an inner sigh that Spock would never vocalize – and something else just under the surface. A sheepishness? Was it un-Vulcan, somehow, to show preference for one object over another? The doctor wracked his brain trying to conjure an image of a Vulcan home. Surely personal preference was permitted within one's own quarters!

"You are correct in surmising that it was once a decoration, doctor. However, I have not displayed it here for that purpose. I merely… recovered it."

McCoy was still staring at the great, dead beast – its body posed, its fur glistening under the red lights. It was a Terran specimen from the nineteenth or early twentieth century: a mountain lion. The eyes, though glass, seemed to hold the light – seemed alive. Like most Terrans, McCoy considered taxidermy a primitive art; it was far easier, cleaner, and humane to simply display holo-mounts or three dimensional liquid crystal images. "Recovered from who?" he finally asked. _And __**why**_?

Long, light-catching Vulcan fingers pointed, indicated a small, golden plaque secured to the rocky, sandy base on which the great, golden cat was posed.

"Kirk 2140," McCoy read. "As in _our _Kirk?"

"His great-grandfather, I believe. Due to his youth and his achievements during this mission, a cult of celebrity has formed around our captain in recent months. Some entrepreneurial-minded individuals have taken it upon themselves to auction off items proclaiming to be connected to Captain Kirk or to his family. When I determined that this piece was authentic, I acquired it with the intention of returning it to the captain."

_Purchased_, McCoy filled in. _Your hard earned pay to protect him from vultures that would make money off of him. Which means… what? That you've been researching him? Receiving communications about these sales? _The doctor's neural networks lit up like the _Enterprise_'s engineering panels during a red alert. _Spock…_ Straining to keep a smile from his face and hoping that his suddenly over-bright eyes wouldn't give him away, he searched the Vulcan's expressionless face. "Does he know?"

"There has not been adequate time to inform him. Our recent voyages…"

_Vulcans don't trail off_, McCoy thought. _You're dissembling, Spock. You didn't tell him because some buried part of you is afraid of giving yourself away. It's not just this big old beasty that our intrepid Captain doesn't know about! _Southern drawl coming out in his excitement he said, "Well, I'd be pleased as punch to tell him for you, Spock, if you'd like."

A Vulcan eyebrow shot up, black and stark as the wings of a crow against a winter sky. "Doctor, I can conceive of no universe in which a sweetened fruit beverage would experience pleasure, but you may inform the Captain if you like. I would be happy to restore his property to him."

McCoy might have told him that the expression concerned a nineteenth-century puppet show and not the drink, but he decided that he didn't want the aggravation of explaining only to be informed that he was being illogical in his choice of phrasing. Instead, he turned to the golden cat that he was quite certain was standing in for a golden-haired captain. "Look at this." He traced over the beast's ribs, indicating a scar. "He was a scrapper."

"I assume you are referring to an affinity for combat," the Vulcan returned in that cool, formal tone of his. "There is also a notch in the left ear and a long mark low on the neck. He survived many attacks before succumbing to a human adversary."

McCoy was barely listening. _Those hands of his… I can hardly believe it!_ Spock, the least sensual creature aboard the _Enterprise_ (and that, to McCoy's mind, included the plants growing in the botany labs and the microorganisms dividing and colonizing slides in the micro-bio labs) was _stroking_ across the mountain lion's soft fur, taking clear pleasure in the texture. As a physician, he found himself wanting to prolong this phenomenon. As Spock's friend and a champion of the human parts of him, he believed that it could do nothing but good. In the spirit of those beliefs, he dredged up every fact he could think of or make up to keep Spock talking – and touching. Caught up in the conversation, Spock seemed completely unaware of the actions of his hands as they smoothed over the lean, muscled body, as they petted the soft ruff around the cat's cheeks.

A sharp pain caught the physician in the chest at the Vulcan's gentleness, so much in contrast to the strength he possessed. _I've seen that gentleness before, Spock. When he came sweeping in, alive and well. If Christine and I hadn't been there, you would've done a hell of a lot more than hang onto his shoulders for a minute. Your shields were low enough for your feelings to push your body around for a change… and I think Jim would have been brave enough to hold back! _ Mind full with the war that Spock constantly waged with himself, McCoy even let the latest scans slide in favor of visiting.

Shifts rotated nine times before activities aboard the _Enterprise_ quieted enough for McCoy to take his findings to Jim. Making his way to the observation deck, the doctor shook his head at exactly how much could occur in three "days" in space (even without a sunrise, he'd never broken the Earth-bound habit of dividing time into nights and days). Routine maintenance had caused some sort of conflict between the emergency lights and the ship's true lighting; some decks had looked like a disco that McCoy had seen once in a twentieth-century film. On top of that, a careless crewmember had set the vents in the botany labs blowing _outward_, so that pollen and spores had been distributed throughout parts of the ship. He'd had his hands full distributing allergy hypos and quarantining crewmembers who had taken especially high doses of alien pollen. _Enterprise_ personnel had a poor track record when it came to crew-plant interactions. The beast in Spock's quarters had been on his mind, of course, but there simply hadn't been a free moment to talk to Jim. The cat could be mentioned in passing, but his other conclusions might be harder to digest – and he wanted to be around in case his superior officer started to panic.

Brandy poured, viewscreen adorned with a simulation of stars visible from Earth, he updated Kirk and watched his face for signs of shock. To his disappointment, the captain merely smiled and acted as though the recovery of the cat was nothing out of the ordinary. "You know how fiercely loyal Spock is, Bones." _Even more so after the events of Vulcan, _he thought. The fear that he had done him harm had caused Spock to become even more protective of his person than usual. "He probably saw the sale of the scruffy thing as some kind of slight to my family honor."

"And you don't find it at all odd that in his off hours your Science Officer is searching your name on the data nets?" It was difficult to leave an insult off of the end. Jim Kirk was an intelligent man; surely he could see that the situation was abnormal.

Kirk just shrugged. "He probably thinks of it as part of his job."

McCoy made an exasperated sound that was all consonants. "Jim, you didn't see him with it. You didn't see the way his hands moved. He was _petting_ it. Spock! A Vulcan!" _Using it as a surrogate form of touch, as something he's __**allowed**__to touch. _"And it has _your_ name on it!" _He wants __**you**__ to touch him, you idiot!_

Kirk was lost in thought, but the avenue of his mental wanderings proved not to intersect with the roads McCoy had already traveled down. "You know, he liked that cat that our time traveling friend had. Isis."

_A __**cat**__ is not what he needs_, Bones thought, mind swerving away from the cruder term at the last possible second. "Jim, I didn't mean,"

The captain cut him off. "But you've suggested it before. We can make it crew wide of course – Spock would never go for anything that singled him out. And we'll have to draw up some regulations, too. No pets above a certain size. Nothing allowed in the labs. Only so many animals per deck. They've engineered non-shedding pets now. It would be good for morale."

Bones gaped, aghast at just what he'd wrought. _I wanted you to realize that your best friend has touchy-feely feelings for you – not turn Enterprise into a petting zoo!_ He kept the words behind his lips.

Jim looked positively pleased with himself as he playfully punched his friend in the shoulder. "Next shore leave, Bones, I'm getting Spock a cat."

One thing that you could say for Captain James Tiberius Kirk, Bones thought, he was as good as his word. Six weeks after their observation deck conversation (in which Jim remained as dense as the densest of neutron stars), he appeared outside of Spock's quarters with a gold-and-caramel furball with pink toes, a pink nose, pink inner ears, and a patch of white fluff lining his throat. A kitten became the first official animal of the _Enterprise. _McCoy held his breath throughout the exchange. He expected Spock to cite regulations or to turn green with embarrassment, to demand to know just why Kirk had imagined he could want such a thing, to refuse and insist the kitten be packed into an escape pod and landed on the nearest life-sustaining planet. Instead, he accepted the drowsy catling, wide eyes watching as it clambered from Kirk's warm hands into his own. If it would not have been sheer madness to do so, McCoy would have nominated the little feline for a medal of bravery. The first thing it did in its life aboardship was to snuggle into Spock's uniformed chest, close its eyes, purr, and fall asleep.

"He knows he's your cat, Spock," Kirk announced, pleased at the union. "What are you going to call him?"

"Tiberius."

McCoy's jaw went rocket-firing toward the deck.


End file.
